In the New York Post, John Podhoretz makes the case that the results from Iowa last night validate good old-fashioned campaigning, but also point up the uselessness of having so many presidential debates, which exposed the weakness of Rick Perry but also gave undue attention to Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich.

Thomas Friedman of the Times makes a similar argument about the debates, although not from the perspective of their partisan value or of what they ultimately showed about the primacy of organization. Instead, Friedman lamented that none of the Republican presidential candidates were really asked questions "about the world in which we're living in and how we adapt to it."

Story Continued Below

A consensus, of sorts.

Some links:

Mitt Romney didn't get the decisive win he was hoping for. [Jeff Zeleny]

The losers were a lot less obvious than the winner, and New Hampshire is unlikely to clear things up. [Steve Kornacki]